Sunday, March 29, 2009

Mongomery: Civil RIghts

There is also a lot about the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery. Two episodes in history are particularly important.
December 1st 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white man. This began a boycott of the buses which lasted 385 days and culminated in the city being forced by the federal government to remove segregation from the buses (though they were able to keep segregated bus stops!). This is one of the most famous incidents where peaceful protest has produced a positive result.
March 7th 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, was the day that a group of blacks ried to march from Selma to the Capitol in Montgomery, only to be beaten back by state troopers. The march was completed by March 25th 1965 when Martin Luther King led the march up Dexter Ave, past his own church, to the entrance of the Capitol building (they were not allowed in). The publicity that this generated led directly to blacks being allowed to vote (they had been entitled to vote since about 1879, but a variety of rules and laws had effectively removed their franchise).

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